Massachusetts Justices Clear Way for New Trials in Cases Chemist May Have Tainted

A ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday is expected to help untangle parts of the sentencing mess left by the mishandling of drug samples by a state chemist that might have tainted tens of thousands of criminal cases.

In the unanimous decision, justices ruled that defendants whose convictions were based on evidence tainted by the chemist, Annie Dookhan, can seek new trials without facing added charges or a more severe sentence.

“It clears a path for people to challenge — when I say people, I say thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people — to challenge their convictions without fear that prosecutors will respond by seeking to revive harsher charges or harsher sentences that were relinquished in a plea bargain,” said Matthew Segal, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Ms. Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to 27 counts, including perjury, obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence, and was sentenced to three to five years in prison plus two years of probation. Prosecutors said that during her nine years at a drug lab in Boston, where she processed drug samples seized from suspects, Ms. Dookhan failed to properly test samples before declaring them positive, mixed up samples and forged signatures and lied about her credentials. Ms. Dookhan’s lawyer said she was trying to be the best chemist on staff.

More than 300 people were released from prison when their convictions were voided because of the tainted evidence. One defendant, Jamell Spurill, who was rearrested shortly after being released, told the police that he loved Ms. Dookhan because her actions had gotten him out of prison. Another, Donta Hood, was charged with first-degree murder a few months after his release.

But there are most likely thousands more “Dookhan defendants,” the catchall term for those whose convictions relied on possibly tainted evidence, who had already served their time by 2012 but who would nevertheless benefit from having their convictions removed. By the end of 2014, according to court papers, fewer than 1,200 defendants had filed for post-conviction relief — which Mr. Segal attributed to fear by many that they could actually face previously dropped charges or additional prison time if their cases were overturned.

“This dynamic was causing the entire effort to get justice, due process, causing that effort to come to a screeching halt,” Mr. Segal said. “People were not filing new motions. People were afraid.”

Last year, the state and national A.C.L.U. organizations and the law firm Foley Hoag filed a petition on behalf of three defendants who had pleaded guilty based on Ms. Dookhan’s tainted evidence seeking protection for defendants and a mechanism to ensure faster reviews of cases.

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Annie Dookhan at her arraignment in 2012.CreditPool photo by Steven Senne

Lawyers representing prosecutors in Suffolk and Essex Counties — named as respondents — opposed the petition, which they said was based on hypothetical assertions. They said procedures were already in place to resolve post-conviction motions made by Dookhan defendants, and said there was no support for petitioners’ concerns about vindictive prosecutions.

The prosecutors argued in late 2014 that defendants routinely face their original charges after repudiating a plea bargain. “In fact, such revival is consistent with the longstanding practices in Massachusetts,” the filing said.

But Justice Francis X. Spina wrote that restoring all of defendants’ original charges would be unfair, because Dookhan defendants’ decisions to withdraw guilty pleas “must be viewed as an inevitable result of the disclosure of Dookhan’s misconduct.”

“That being the case,” Justice Spina wrote, “the commonwealth cannot simply reprosecute the petitioners as if the plea agreements had never existed, thereby giving the commonwealth a second bite at the proverbial apple in its efforts to convict the petitioners.”

The ruling, Justice Spina wrote, essentially caps a defendant’s sentence to what it was under the plea agreement.

In 2013, a lawyer hired to review the issue by the state said some 40,000 cases could have been affected by Ms. Dookhan’s misconduct; at the hearing in January, lawyers for the prosecutors said that number was likely closer to 20,000. At the same hearing, a lawyer representing the state’s public defenders said it has been difficult to determine exactly who was affected.

In Monday’s ruling, the justices stopped short of imposing a so-called “global remedy,” which would have vacated the convictions of all of the Dookhan defendants. The ruling encourages prosecutors across the state to provide information to speed up the process of identifying those defendants, as prosecutors in Suffolk and Essex counties had done earlier in the case.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for Daniel F. Conley, the district attorney for Suffolk County, called the ruling “lopsided.”

“These convicted defendants now have nothing to lose and everything to gain by withdrawing their evidence-based admissions of guilt,” Mr. Wark said, adding, “It provides defendants who unequivocally admitted their guilt the second bite at the proverbial apple that the high court was so careful to withhold from the Commonwealth.”

Correction:May 21, 2015

Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about a ruling that cleared the way for new trials in cases involving a Massachusetts state chemist, Annie Dookhan, misstated the court that made the decision. It is the Supreme Judicial Court, not the Supreme Court.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Massachusetts Justices Clear Way for New Trials in Cases Chemist May Have Tainted . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe